All I'll Ever Need

“You got it, right?”

I struggled to hold my phone up to my ear with my shoulder while I searched through the carry-on bag I had thrown onto the bed of the oversized suite Sidney was kind enough to spend too much of his money on for Matty and me.

When I pulled his phone charger out of my bag, I sighed. “Yes. I got it. It’s in my hand. You should come and get it. I’ve got a surprise for you.”

“Oh, really?” he asked, and there was a hint of deviousness in that sexy Canadians voice. “Am I gonna like it?”

“Come over here and find out.” I hung up the phone before he could say anything else, and with a smirk, I imagined just what that poor boy was doing.

Probably red from head to toe with an expression that mixed a deer-in-the-headlights look with a kid at Christmas kind of thing.

Matty was sitting on the couch with a frown, but he wasn’t looking at me. Instead, he was reading the book he had gotten for the plane ride, and I figured out that he hated it five minutes in.

“You’re horrible to him,” he told me.

I rolled my eyes and shrugged. “Yeah, well, he’s horrible. Do you see this room?”

“Horrible is defined as very unpleasant,” he said. “This room isn’t unpleasant, aside from your idiotic conscious that can’t accept nice things from people.”

“You can’t either,” I grunted.

Matty smirked. “Yeah, well, this wasn’t for me, so I can enjoy it thoroughly.”

“He got this for you, too,” I sighed.

Matty started to protest in some eloquent way that shut me up and made me accept the things Sidney had done for me—at least that’s what I imagined he was gonna say—but a knock on the door, not even a full minute later, stopped him.

And of course it was Sidney with his face as red as I imagined. His bashful eyes were focused down on the deep red floors his face matched rather well.

“Uh, my phone’s dying,” he said.

I started to say something, but this time, I was interrupted by someone else. From the way Duper ran up behind Sidney, I figured he was probably the one Sidney was rooming with.

“Damn it, you’re not naked,” he sighed. “Here I was hoping there was some phone sex going on.”

And Sidney only turned an even brighter shade of red. I, however, looked to Duper with a taunting smile.

“I’m a fan of having real sex first,” I said, and for some fucking reason, I winked at him. “Give us at least half an hour.”

Duper smirked as I pulled Sidney into my room and closed the door. “Hit him hard, girl!”

“Fuck, Mika, you’re horrible,” Sidney groaned.

I turned to face him with a sweet smile. “Whatever do you mean?”

“You. Are. Horrible,” he said, and he just groaned again. “Why do you do this to me? I mean, honestly.”

“All in good fun, darling,” I said as I practically danced across the room and over to Matty. “Consider it payback for you fucking paying for everything.”

Sidney’s face returned to its normal shade as his lips turned into a smirk of their own. “Still on that, are we?”

“Still on that.”

Matty scoffed. “If you two are gonna pretend have sex, I’m leaving the damn room.”

“It’s pretend sex, not real sex,” I reminded him. “Trust me. When the real sex comes, there is no safe place.”

I had never seen such a vibrant red on Sidney’s cheeks as I did then, but I found it a bit . . . exciting to do this to him.

Sidney had to wait a minute before he said anything, but once the red was gone from his face, his eyes narrowed a little when they met mine. “Alright, you. None of that shit. You can’t fuck with me like that.”

“Okay, okay,” I agreed. “No pretend sex until we’re actually having sex. Got it.”

“Can someone just shoot me, please?” Matty groaned.

And even though Sidney was still red from my recent mention of the two of us having sex, he laughed. We both did, and I just kinda realized that this was exactly how things would be when we were more than friends.

Whenever I decided to be in a relationship with Sidney, this was how things would be, except I could kiss him without judgment. Our lives would be perfect, I think.

At least until something went wrong.

Sidney knew Duper would hound him when he got back to his room, but he would take it all for just two more minutes with her.

He was in no position to argue with her, but man did he wish she didn’t wanna wait. Everything word that slipped through her soft pink lips stuck in Sidney’s brain as if they were a part of his mind, yet they sounded like soft lullabies. He had never understood the way her voice sounded. She wasn’t high pitched like most females he knew, but she wasn’t low pitched like a man either. Her voice was a perfect middle of the two, and Sidney found himself wanting to hear it more and more.

Maybe her voice was a drug for him, or maybe it was just her. Sometimes, even when she talked, Sidney found himself intoxicated by the curve of her jaw, or the glow of her green eyes as they stared into his. What was it about her? She was undeniably beautiful. He didn’t understand how she had gone so long in her life without hearing that, but why had Sidney struggled to find any other woman beautiful since?

She changed his standards of beauty . . . in every other woman he passed by, all he saw was pretty or okay, but never beautiful.

Because of her, he realized there was more to beauty than looks, and if all knew were looks, he couldn’t decide if someone was beautiful or not.

Why had he never felt this way about anyone before? He had been with his ex-girlfriend for almost four years, and he thought he loved her, but this? He had never felt the way he did about Mika.

With Jamie, he sometimes missed her, and whenever she was down for sex, so was he, but their relationship lacked passion. It lacked real intimacy, and maybe that was why Sidney didn’t really miss her. Maybe that was why Sidney didn’t really establish the connection he needed.

But why was it there with Mika? They weren’t even together, and he cared more about her than he did anyone else. He wanted to be everything she wanted. He wanted to give her everything she wanted. He wanted to do anything she wanted to make her life what she wanted it to be.

It was scary to him, being so willing to give up just about anything for one person . . . but he was. Hockey was the one exception, but he knew Mika would never ask him to give up hockey.

Sidney knew she wanted to explore Chicago, and as much as he hated to think about it, he knew she wanted to see Jonny. His own insecurity wanted to lock her away from him, but he knew she would only get angry with him. She might even resent him for it.

So as he took her out of the hotel and showed her around, he sent Jonathan a quick text.
Hey. Mika and I are about to get some ice cream at Scooter’s if you wanna join us.

I was really bummed that Matty didn’t come out with Sidney and me. He said it was because he was tired, but I kinda felt like it was more than that.

Matty never went anywhere where he would have to use his crutches a lot, or he would have to roll himself around a lot. It wasn’t because he was lazy or couldn’t do it. It was because he felt like a burden to everyone he would be with, felt he would only slow them down. So instead, he didn’t go.

I tried to convince him to come, but he wouldn’t budge. He never did. Instead, he laid on his bed to take a nap, and Sidney and I went to some ice cream place down the road.

It wasn’t much of an exploration, but ice cream sounded really good.

They had so many different flavors, one of which I hadn’t had in so long that I forgot it actually existed. So, Sidney got me a huge bowl of confetti cake ice cream, and he got himself a hot fudge sundae.

We started to talk about the game, how he thought it would go, and I listened. He seemed to enjoy being able to vent about his fears and frustrations to someone who wouldn’t be affected by it.

If he were to tell Beau, “I’m so worried we’re gonna lose tomorrow,” then Beau would be worried they were gonna lose. The captain can’t show fear. He can’t show a lack of confidence in any part of his team, or everyone would.

When people started crowding around, asking for autographs or making passive aggressive comments—clearly Blackhawks fans—the hockey talk stopped.

We didn’t say much, really. Not because there was nothing to say, but it was more along the lines of Sidney had to focus on me after a man passed by and coughed under his breath, “Diver in town.” Every part of him wanted to stand up and deck the guy, or maybe he just wanted to say something back.

But he didn’t. He focused on me because for some reason, my face calmed him down. I didn’t really get it, and when I looked into his eyes, he didn’t seem very calm. Actually, his eyes were blazing with an emotion I couldn’t read.

Maybe it wasn’t anger, though.

I decided to get his mind off . . . whatever it was on. “Have you ever realized that if you hadn’t met someone, your life could be completely different?”

Like I hoped, it gave him something else to think about, and with a small smile, he shook his head. “Never thought about it, but you’re right.”

“If I hadn’t met Suzie, I probably would’ve gone off the deep end,” I said.

His tiny smile turned into a huge and rather sexy smirk. “Wait, so you’re not crazy?”

“No, I’m crazy,” I laughed, and my nose scrunched a little when I looked into his eyes. “I’m just a crazy that can function in society.”

He nodded. “Right. Got it.”

“Good.”

“You’re one of those people,” he said out right with no hesitation, no reluctance. His eyes looked straight into mine, and he uttered those words without pause.

That alone caught me off guard, maybe as much as his words did. “What?”

“You’re one of those people I’m gonna look back and think that my life changed for the better because of you,” he said. “My life hasn’t been the same since I met you.”

“I . . . I can’t see why I’m for the better,” was the only thing I could think to say, and when I did, I immediately regretted it.

The happiness that I managed to get into his eyes dimmed a little to make room for a bit of sadness. “Because all you see when you look in the mirror is bad, and all I see when I look at you is good.”

The loud cheers that erupted around me weren’t enough to distract my thoughts from what Sidney said. How was it that he managed to be adorable, sexy, funny, and sweet? It seemed like an unfair advantage in life to be all of those things. Adorable and sexy were hard enough as they were, but funny and sweet? They were more common than the first two, but all four of those things together? It didn’t seem right or fair in the slightest bit.

I opened my mouth to say something, but another random person who happened to be in the ice cream parlor stopped me.

It wasn’t that I recognized him because I didn’t know this man from any other face in the crowd, but when he walked by, he actually stopped and stared at Sidney and me for a good ten seconds before he turned to me.

“Cindy’s gay.”

“Now, I wouldn’t go that far,” a very familiar voice said from behind me, something that stopped my movement completely. “Look at the beautiful face sitting right in front him and tell me how a man getting a piece of that is gay.”

Sidney’s face was blood red, but the man who spoke looked at the captain of his favorite NHL team with wide eyes. I think he was, first of all, stunned that Jonathan Toews was even here, and second of all, he was stunned that he was defending Sidney Crosby, captain of the team he would play against tomorrow.

The man turned his head down towards the ground and walked away with his tail tucked under.

“Hey, Sidney,” Tazer said as he stood by the edge of the table. His eyes were only briefly on Sidney before they moved over and stayed locked on me. “And you must be Mika. Wow. You’re much more beautiful in person.”

Oh. My. Goodness.